Civil rights groups want consent searches banned

July 25, 2008|By FROM NEWS SERVICES

Civil rights groups on Thursday asked Gov. Blagojevich to bar state police from conducting consent searches during traffic stops, citing four years of data that show minorities are searched more often than whites.

In 2007, minorities underwent consent searches -- when police ask drivers for permission to look in their vehicles -- at a rate 2 1/2 times that of white drivers, according to an analysis of data reported by police agencies throughout the state. Contraband, such as drugs or guns, was discovered almost twice as often among white drivers as among minorities.

"You're talking about hundreds and hundreds of black and Latino drivers being subjected to consent searches," said Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, part of an eight-member coalition of civil rights groups asking for a halt to such searches. "We're hopeful the governor will get rid of them."

Blagojevich's office and the Illinois State Police said Thursday they haven't seen the coalition's request and didn't have an immediate response.

The Illinois Department of Transportation has collected the data from police agencies since Jan. 1, 2004, under a state law aimed at identifying racial bias in traffic stops. The state also created a Racial Profiling Prevention and Data Oversight Board, which is due to issue a recommendation on the data by Jan. 1, 2010.

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Consent statsConsent searches made up less than 1 percent of all traffic stops in 2007, according to the analysis, completed by Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety. The study analyzed 2.4 million traffic stops reported by 939 police agencies statewide. Minority drivers were 10 percent more likely to be stopped on Illinois roads than white drivers, according to the 2007 data, but that figure is at its lowest level since 2004.